Motion Picture Association of America

As a college sophomore more interested in movies than in college, I caught director Carroll Ballard's "The Black Stallion" in a dumpy theater in downtown Minneapolis, well into my first period of adventurous moviegoing, both foreign and domestic. On paper, Ballard's G-rated 1979 feature film debut, an adaptation of the 1941 Walter Farley novel about a boy and his horse, held nothing for me. I went because of the reviews, and because of executive producer Francis Coppola's "presented by" billing on the poster. The skeptic went in, and two hours later a transported lifelong fan came out. The first half, depicting a terrifying shipwreck, a rescue and a...

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